NO, you may not
by MaleaBotor
Summary: Donna has an unfortunate experience at the 2008 Penguincon. Bewildered!Doctor is bewildered.


**Title:** NO, you may not  
**Summary:** Donna gets dragged to a sci-fi convention by the Doctor. She is not pleased.  
**Rating:** PG, just to be safe  
**Word count:** 1105  
**Characters/pairings:** Ten, Donna  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. How depressing. And I have this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.  
**Author's notes:** This story is my take on the rather unfortunate incident at Penguincon. Because everything is funnier when you add in the Doctor and Donna.

WHACK!

The Doctor's eyes went wide and hurt as he rubbed his cheek unhappily.

"All right, what did I do this time?" he asked apprehensively. "I mean, I can understand that this might not be your idea of fun but we were in the neighbourhood and this sort of thing is always good for a bit of a laugh. Pointing out inaccuracies, that sort of…oh. What's that face for? I didn't think it would…I mean, they have this neat room set up with…"

"That's right, sunshine," Donna hissed at him. "Dig yourself into a deeper hole."

"But what did I do?!" the Doctor wailed, then realized how he sounded and shut his mouth.

"The vast crowds of nerds, I can deal with," said Donna. "After all, I travel with you, AND I have a cousin who used to drag me to Eastercon every year until he got a girlfriend. But, first of all, I refuse to believe that we were "in the neighbourhood". When do we EVER go to Michigan?"

"We did the—"

"No, that was Michigan the PLANET."

"Oh yes, well…slight miscalculation—"

"No, it wasn't," said Donna. "And you know, I don't even mind that. You're clearly very happy arguing Star Trek with a load of other geeks and playing this…whatever it is."

"Quake 3," supplied the Doctor. "And actually, I—" He cut off, about to say, "I'm in the middle of something," but remembering who he was talking to.

"Whatever," said Donna. "Actually, I thought you didn't like guns. And yet, your player seems to be holding a rather large one."

"Uh…" said the Doctor, noticing the hypocrisy but deciding to defend his guilty pleasure. "Well, it's really only a game. Um. That I'm rather good at. And look, I WAS playing Audiosurf for quite a long time before you came in. I don't—"

"Oh never mind that," said Donna impatiently. "The fact is, someone at this horrible convention just tried to molest me!"

"What?" said the Doctor.

"Someone gave me a pin on the way in," said Donna, sounding a little strangled like she was suppressing herself from yelling, "and I honestly thought it was just a reference to some sort of science-fiction-y thing I hadn't heard of." The Doctor's eyes roved to the green button Donna had pinned to her shirt. "So I put it on. As a show of good faith, right?"

"Right…" said the Doctor. "Oh! No!" He turned frantically back to his screen as someone fragged his player.

"Switch that off," said Donna coldly. After an extremely brief moment of contemplation, the Doctor quickly pressed the power button on his laptop (that he had found in a rubbish bin and modded just for these occasions) and turned to Donna. He smiled, and then remembered what she had just told him and put a very serious sympathetic look on.

"Anyway, as soon as you decided to go do this computer thing, I went to that interesting marble thing from earlier and on the way was approached by a virtual HOARD of nerds, all demanding to know whether they could touch my breasts. One of them actually DID before I hit him. Apparently, this badge thing means I am fair game." She glared at him. "Did you know?" The Doctor gaped.

"Did I—do you think I set this up?!"

"I don't know," said Donna. "You could have. You might have been hoping that they'd ask while you were there and you could join them. Don't think I haven't noticed the amount of times you haven't been making eye contact when you're talking to me."

"I didn't take you to a con so I could take advantage of you!" sputtered the Doctor.

"Right," said Donna.

"That's…that's ridiculous!" said the Doctor. "I respect you very much and…I'd never do that to ANYONE. Why don't you just take the pin off?"

"It's proof," said Donna. "Of…of your TREACHERY."

"I had nothing to do with this!" the Doctor protested. "Didn't you even think about what 'YES, you may' might mean?"

"I thought it was a catchphrase," said Donna. "I don't know about any of this! You should have told me!"

"I thought YOU knew what it was," said the Doctor. "You put it on. I hadn't ever seen it before!"

"Excuse me," said a man, coming up to Donna. The Doctor tried to make warning facial expressions at him but he didn't notice. Donna whirled on the newcomer.

"What?" she said icily.

"May I tou—"

"NO YOU MAY NOT!" bellowed Donna. "Not in this lifetime or the next. Not EVER. Have you got that?!" The man, clearly a slow learner, looked annoyed.

"Jeez, sorry. I didn't think you'd be so uncool about it." The Doctor groaned and put his head in his hands.

"You think I'm being uncool?" Donna shouted. "You just came up to me in the 21st century to try and MOLEST me publicly and you think I'm being uncool?! I have to put up with this sort of thing on a regular basis while travelling and I do NOT want to have to put up with it HERE."

"You are wearing a badge, you know," said the man grumpily. Donna smacked him and he reeled backwards.

"I was tricked into it," said Donna. She whirled around to glare at the Doctor and he flinched automatically. "This is all your fault. It's like Druthar all over again."

"That was an accident," said the Doctor. "Besides, if you'd just have pretended that we were married, then—"

"In your dreams," said Donna. "We're leaving. Now." She fumbled the pin angrily off her shirt.

"Oh, but—" said the Doctor, and then wished he hadn't.

Then Donna smiled and the Doctor became instantly worried.

"All right," she said. "We can stay for the rest of the day." She held the pin out to him. "As long as you wear this." The Doctor blinked.

"But…what will that mean? They 'may' what?"

"That'll be for them to decide," said Donna, sounding very pleased with herself. The Doctor nervously took the pin from her and affixed it to the lapel of his jacket.

"Come on," said Donna. "That panel on science fiction books you were babbling about is starting soon. Let's go." The Doctor sighed, packed up his laptop, slipped it surreptitiously into his pocket and followed Donna. After all this was over, he was going to find whoever had invented this breast-touching thing and…well, he didn't know yet but it was going to involve a lot of yelling probably.

This was the second-worst con he'd ever been to.


End file.
